


It was her hands

by LittleSpider



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt, Injury, Unrequited, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSpider/pseuds/LittleSpider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whilst on a mission, Natasha is suddenly taken ill, Clint does all he can to help...even if it's very little</p>
            </blockquote>





	It was her hands

****

It was her hands

 

__

It was her hands.  
They were supple, and firm. Supple and strong. They could hold a gun, a grenade, a blade, or they could hold a cold, blood soaked wash cloth, a tourniquet, a hand.  
These hands were dancer’s hands; they had arced gracefully through the air as impossibly beautiful feet had performed a complicated ballet move that Clint couldn’t even pronounce.  
And they were soldier’s hands, hands that had pulled triggers with minimum recall, ending the lives of men, and women at the orders of another.  
But these hands were different to anyone else’s…  
Because right now, these hands were cold…

Clint and Natasha had been dropped off at a meeting, undercover. Espionage, nothing unusual.  
“Romanov, I want pictures, I want data, and I want Intel. Barton, you’re there in case things turn ugly and she can’t get out.” Hill had said in the brief.  
Natasha had ribbed him gently about being the muscle much later on in Morocco as she slipped a gun into her thigh holster beneath the velvet dress that accentuated those famous curves of hers so well that it pained Clint physically to ignore them.  
He had stuck his tongue out childishly and moved to get his guns.

He had watched as she met the arms dealer in the busy Moroccan street café, sipping at lemonade in the bar opposite, watchful for anything that would put her in danger.  
She laughed at his jokes, flicked her eyes up at him like a teenage girl meeting her rock star idol, and even whispered behind her hand to him, acting like the ‘assistant’ to the big boss who was interested in trading with him, and preparing to make a drop off as she stroked the stem of her glass with those nimble fingers.  
And he plied her with wine.  
Clint shook his head with a smirk of amusement.  
Natasha was Russian; she could hold her drink better than any of them. The wine would do nothing.  
An hour later, Natasha permitted her mark to kiss her hand and leave, a fake time, name and contact number set up to arrange a more lively meeting where the dealer would be greeted not by Mr. Akalay as he had believed, but perhaps 20 or 30 of SHIELD’s finest and a warrant for extradition to the states.  
As Clint followed Natasha back to their hotel, he kept his pace twenty paces behind, talking to nobody on his cell, acting the tourist as she blended in seamlessly. Nobody would guess he was her guard.  
He had to keep his gaze from backside as she weaved through the busy streets, her red hair glowing in the evening sunset.  
She had no idea how good she looked when she was ‘Natasha’ and not the Black Widow.  
Desire instructed him to make a move, to kiss those plump lips over their room service meal and suffer the consequences. Wisdom told him that the black eye would not be worth it.  
Watching her turn a corner towards the hotel, he saw that she stumbled a little on her heels, Clint felt something in his stomach that squirmed with amusement--had Natasha finally met her match with Moroccan wine?…and at the same time, something else…uncertainty.  
Quickening his pace, and his conversation, keeping up the charade of telling ‘Pops’ back home about a Camel he saw at the market today and how that rug he got him would look ‘swell‘ in the hall, he kept his gaze firmly on Natasha beneath the black sunglasses and saw her slow down…  
Slow down…  
Stop…  
The phone slid down his wrist as he caught it, drawing level with her now, his gaze on her as she stood, perfectly still…  
In the hustle and bustle of the busy marketplace, fraught with traders and tourists…time seemed to still suddenly as her gaze turned to him, the blood draining from her face.  
Something was wrong.  
“Tasha?”  
Her lips parted, her eyes creased…  
He made it to her just in time for her to fall against him, her body limp.  
Time sped back up and she collapsed in his arms.  
“Tasha!” he cried out, shaking her prone body in his arms as the hubbub around him refused to cease.  
He had to get her out of here, she’d been injured, or something…  
Scooping her up into his arms, he dashed into the nearest secluded space, a boarded up doorway down a less busy street.  
Resting her against the faded, peeling wooden door he checked her face for signs of injury.  
She was pale, sweating, her breathing was laboured…but there was no blood on her…she hadn’t been shot.  
He pressed his rough fingers to her neck…  
Her pulse was rapid.  
It wasn’t sickness, Natasha never got sick. And sickness never came on this fast…she’d been fine minutes earlier…  
Pulling out his phone, he dialled the secure number to their SHIELD contact.  
“Report.”  
“Widow down. I repeat, Widow down.”  
“Activate your tracker.”  
Clint pressed a few buttons, his hand shaking a little as his fingers on her neck detected the pulse becoming weaker.

__

Somehow…they found them…

They had an agreement with Gibraltar, a British territory off the coast of Spain, that should SHIELD have use of it, they would be welcome there.  
Clint had no idea what SHIELD had done for Britain, but it must have been big to let something as covert as SHIELD in.  
Clint did not count the minutes as he stood over Natasha’s rapidly paling body as field medics took details of the encounter to rule out the usual suspects.  
Clint told them word for word what had happened, everything he had seen.  
Her meeting, the details Nat had gathered the pictures of the blue prints for the nuclear arms that were secluded in the memory card of the pinhole camera that was in her fake glasses, now safely in her purse--the information safe--the top priority…or at least they said it was…  
The wine…  
And that’s when it hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.  
That bastard had poisoned her.  
As he reached his conclusion, the team medic threw him a sympathetic look and tried to keep Natasha stable until they reached the main hospital on land.  
The medic was giving her an infusion of something, pressing a needle into the back of her hand, the knot of perfect, blue-glass veins under the satin sheet of skin that was her hand…  
He had never felt a more pressing urge to hold them than he did now.

 

It was getting on for midnight, local time when Coulson had flown in on the first flight and Clint had never been more glad to see his SO.  
Coulson gave him a reproving look when he first saw him which Clint put down to him staring through the glass at his partner who was now in a bed, wired up to God knows what. But the following look was sympathetic.  
“I brought one of ours…” he began. “Doctor thinks it’s a toxin. There was nothing you could have done.”  
Why did Phil always know what to say?  
Clint’s smile was a little forced, but all the same entirely grateful as he nodded, rubbing his head and telling his exhaustion to back off.  
Coulson took a place next to Clint, staring at Natasha.  
“…She looks bad.” Clint’s croak of a voice muttered. “…But I’ve seen her worse.”  
Coulson nodded. Words seeming to have deserted him too.  
Several moments of silent agreement passed…  
“…No matter how many times you see them patched up, stitched back together, glued into place again, seeing them broken always gets you.” Coulson began his voice monotonous.  
 _‘Years of practice and still the emotion leaks out’--thought Clint._

It was 3am when Coulson left to talk with the higher-ups back at base and Clint let himself into her room and sat in the vacant, cold chair beside her bed.  
It was strange seeing Natasha so inanimate.  
Her red curly hair spread across the pillow, her body limp and her skin pale…  
Usually, you only had to step a foot out of your bunk and her eyes were wide open her hand on her gun before you had to ask permission to take a piss.  
But here she was…as still as a statue, and just as pale.  
Hesitantly placing his hand on the pillow, he permitted himself to move a curl away from her forehead.  
She hated it when her hair stuck to her head. It must have been driving her crazy…  
He found his hair threaded in the long, red curls.  
Looking up, he ensured nobody was watching before resting his hand on her hand.  
The hand without the drips, and IV’s.  
The hand that was balanced on her stomach.  
These hands that were normally bathed in blood, or sweat, or sweet and sour sauce from take out ribs.  
God damn it. He needed to hold these hands…  
Because right now, these hands were cold…  
He wrapped his hand around it, trying to warm it before stroking her hair soothingly, speaking quietly into her ear.  
“…Tasha, it’s me…you’re alright, Phil’s here and he’s gonna sort it…d’you hear me?”  
The slow, solid beeping of a heart monitor was the only response.  
Not to be disheartened, he stroked her hair reassuringly…  
Reassuringly…he repeated to himself as guilt pricked at him  
“…I’m gonna stay here until you’re alright…then I’m putting an arrow through that guys head…nobody takes my partner down…”  
Squeezing her hands, the hands that Clint always thought belonged in a museum on a marble statue, or in a painting, the cold hands, he tried to give something of himself to get her up and working again.  
Hell, she could use them to slap him for being a soppy asshole for all he cared…as long as she got up…

 

It was just after 6am and the day was already too hot for Clint to comfortably bear in the creased, formerly tailored shirt and jacket he still wore from his mission.  
The poison’s antidote was now dripping into the IV that led directly into Natasha’s arm. Soon, she would begin to respond to treatment.  
Coulson had ordered him to sleep, but he had merely closed his eyes for twenty minutes while sat beside Natasha hoping that Coulson would buy it.  
He did because as soon as he left, Clint opened his eyes again to keep his silent vigil of his partner.  
Coulson had taken the information in the card of the fake glasses and had it transmitted securely back to base.  
Soon that bastard’s face would be all over Interpol too.  
That guy was on everyone’s shit list…and Clint wanted to be the guy to bring him down.  
Nobody tries to take down his partner.

It was 8pm at night when Clint woke up to a touch on his hand.  
His head buried in his folded arms, he raised his sleepy head from his limbs to see those fingertips. Those tapered fingertips…connected to that slender arm…connected to those beautiful shoulders…with that smile…  
That sleepy ‘I’m gonna be okay, Clint’ smile.  
Clint couldn’t help but return it.  
“…Hey…” he managed before clearing his throat and sitting up.  
“…hey…” she replied. “…what you doing here?” she asked her voice cracking from lack of use.  
“…Oh…you know…passing the time.” he winked.  
She smiled.  
Closing her eyes again, she seemed to let the gravity of waking up in hospital, on drips and drugs and tubes settle on her. Perhaps retracing her final moments prior to this.  
Taking his chance, he brought that hand, that perfect hand of hers to his lips and kissed it once, softly.  
Her eyes opened in acknowledgement as she barely concealed the look of faint indignation and bold surprise.  
“…why did you do that, Barton?” he asked softly.  
“…Didn’t think I could get away with it while you were fit enough to hit me…”  
She chuckled weakly and rested her hand on her head.  
“…your lousy chat up lines are gonna kill me, Clint.”  
“Nah.” he smiled, shaking head. “You’re gonna be alright, Tasha.”


End file.
